I bet you didn’t know that most blue-collar men carry their wallet in the back right pocket; wealthier men tend to keep it in the left inner breast pocket of their jackets. Once you spot it, you just have to help them open it, and loneliness opens wallets faster than hunger. Mum always says that a lot of girls make the mistake of thinking you want a rich single guy, but you don’t, you want a married one. The married ones have way more to lose, and that’s the point. Loss is leverage. Loss is power, and power is expensive. A husband with a steady mortgage, sparkling reputation, and a child who hates his mother but loves their sports car will do things for silence he would never do for pleasure. He will sell his soul to save his reputation, and that is a tidy profit.
Sitting in our big fancy hotel room paid for by the last guy, I know what I’m supposed to do. Mom will have ordered room service for me. When I hear a knock on the door, I run and start the shower. If anyone asks why I’m answering the door alone, I say Mum’s in the shower, but they almost never do. I then enjoy my dinner and whatever movie I can find on pay-per-view, and I wait. Mum will call with the news report shortly, pretend she’s ordering champagne, she found a good one, red wine she found a roller, and a beer she came up empty. A few nights at this hotel until the card has time to be canceled, and we will move on. If she finds a Crown Royal, then we get to stay somewhere for a while, but those are getting harder and harder to find. The phone rings, and it’s Mom, just a glass of wine tonight, which means we hit the pawn shops tomorrow.
Imagine being the guy waking up in your hotel room, the place stripped, jewelry, cash, and any other valuables just gone. No married man with any kind of reputation is going to admit to being rolled by a hooker, and even if they call the police, as long as you don’t become a frequent problem, no one’s having sympathy for the rich guy that got rolled while cheating on his wife during a business trip. It’s why you take the Rolex, maybe a card or two, but never the wedding ring. We never stay in one place long enough to draw attention, always traveling, always a new city. Mom says it’s good for a young girl to see the world, and she will pretend to quote some wise old philosopher. I’m not sure what philosopher ever said, “Yes, run, my child, go see the world with a hooker, but don’t tell a soul.” I guess I missed that little philosophy lesson. I try to tell her I want to go to a real high school, date, have friends, go to prom like Darlene and David, or go to college like Rory. She laughs and tells me I watch too much TV. What else is there to do?
The phone rings again, it’s Grandma. She asks how I’m doing, and I make up some hypothetical museum I went to and some random wonder that I over exaggerate, but it’s enough to satisfy her. She asks about Mom, and I say she’s stuck in meetings. Grandma thinks Mom works in pharmaceutical sales, so do about a hundred other people who woke up with their things missing or their credit cards maxed out, but here we are. Grandma tsks and tuts about whether I’m making friends and her worrying about the life we live, but I do my part and sell it well. I promise to send her my grades from my online classes and have Mum call in the morning and it satisfies her again. Part of me wishes I lived with Grandma, even if it’s the middle of nowhere. School dances would be much more footloose than royal balls, but still, it would be a dance. I always threaten Mom with it when we fight, but she always cries and says how lost she would be, and we go to bed and don’t talk about it again until next time.
Grandma hangs up and I toss the phone on the bed. The room smells like french fries and hotel soap. Mom says hotels all smell the same on purpose so you forget where you are. I don’t think she’s wrong for once.
I clear the tray, wipe the chocolate off my hands, and flip through the channels. Cartoons, news, some rerun of a show where everyone has perfect teeth and perfect lives. That’s the kind of show Mom hates. She says television rots your brain. I think she just hates watching people who look happier than us. Is she one really to judge?
Tomorrow it’s pawn shops. I already know the script. Mom charms the clerk, I play the bored teenager who creates a distraction, she walks out lighter, I walk out heavier. The rules don’t change: cash only, no receipts, no eye contact, no names. You go to the shops away from the main drags, the ones the cops don’t bother with but will pay a good price all the same.
Mom returns, hair a mess, lipstick smeared, but empty-handed. She pulls a cigarette from the beaded bag on the dresser, and I quickly push the balcony door open before she sets off the smoke alarm. She’s empty-handed, staring straight out into the night like a ghost. We both know what this means. We will leave early in the morning. There will be no pawn shops, no stops for bagels and coffee, not before the state line. She doesn’t speak right away. She never does when it goes bad. In these moments I almost see the part of her that knows this is wrong.
“Wrong kind of man,” she says finally, voice flat. “He wasn’t in good shape.” She drops her dress at her feet and storms off toward the bathroom. I can hear her stripping her face and trying to wash off his smell.
I start folding my clothes into my suitcase while she steams the mirrors. Some sitcom hums in the background. I try not to think about what is lying in another room for some unsuspecting maid to find, I know what “not in good shape” means, but they don’t yet. I try not to think about the phone call some poor wife would get tomorrow. She was probably at home, happy and warm, with no idea her whole life was about to change because of another woman, a woman who wasn’t even sorry.
She appears from the bathroom, towel wrapped around her head. When the makeup and perfumes and sequins have washed away, she becomes the mother I know and used to love for just a minute. It’s almost like living with two different people.
“When do you think they will find him?” My words are so cold they even startle me.
“Tomorrow,” she says, “but not until afternoon. He requested a late check-out. We will be gone by then.” It isn’t guilt in her voice. It’s logistics, always the next move three steps ahead in her mind. The faucet drips in the bathroom. The laugh track on the TV spikes, some canned joy over a dead man. My stomach twists. She lights another cigarette.
“We’ll be in Tennessee before anyone knows he’s missing. Change the license plate once we cross,” she continues.
“He had a wife,” I whisper. She exhales smoke in my direction, a gray veil between us.
“They all do.” She doesn’t look at me, just walks back to the balcony. “That’s the point.”
“Grandma called,” I snap, crawling beneath the covers of the large bed. The TV family is laughing now. “I told her you were out making her proud.”
She ignores me.
Jessa Quinn 